Currently reading through Domenico Losurdo's Stalin book. It is a great piece of scholarship and a fitting end note to the great mans life and career. A few points jumped out at me today so here's a rather rambling thread.

Gorbachev was not as singularly important as both his advocates and his enemies portray him as being. He was a rather vain and shallow man who easily flattered and easily impressed with attention from Reagan, Thatcher, Bush and the capitalist media.

Gorbachev was able to come to power because he was chosen by a growing bourgeoisie that had emerged under Khruschev and steadily grown under Brezhnev. Gorbachev was chosen by this class to be their figurehead but he was merely one of many in the pro-capitalist faction.

I often wondered why there was so little resistance inside the party to what Gorbachev was doing considering that by 1989 everything was falling apart. Why was no opposition organised?

The reality was that the party had been gutted by Khruschev a generation earlier. The whole "secret speech" denouncing Stalin was followed by a coup staged against the communists in the politburo (Molotov and Kaganovich mainy) and in total violation of the Soviet constitution.

Khruschev was another vain, pompous fool who thought of himself as a "great man" of history. What he did was usher in the reintroduction of capitalism and the birth of what became known as a shadow economy, the black market.

At the same time he worked to fill the CPSU's ranks with more and more technicians, senior military men, scientists and other representatives of what would slowly become a petit bourgeoisie.

Even after Khruschev was deposed the rot he introduced kept going. The shadow economy slowly created an actual nascent bourgeoisie and the now petit bourgeois base of the party was moving in an every more opportunist direction.

This is exactly what Mao warned of after the Sino-Soviet split. Mao understood and theorised what Stalin himself had missed, that the class struggle after the revolution is not just against elements of the old ruling class but a struggle against the emergence of a new bourgeois.

Hence why some theorists argue that even after the turn to capitalist methods in the PRC the cultural revolution's lasting effects actually prevented the kind of melt down seen in the USSR.

Which bring us back to the 1980's in the USSR again. There are now multiple sources that confirm key figures in the late period of the USSR who became big players in the Yeltsin years were already scheming to end the socialist system as early as the late 1960's.

So to return to Losurdo's "Stalin" work and one of the themes he explores within it. Losurdo looks over the Stalin period and instead of the bizarre, ludicrous and fact free assertions of the anti communist historians he lays out the reality of life in the 20's & 30's USSR.

What went on from the end of the revolutionary war was the attempt to build socialism within the newly formed USSR. During this period there are intense struggles within the CPSU between left and right with things starting to really intensify from 1926 onwards.

The struggle with Trotsky begins in earnest after he refuses to accept defeat at successive congresses. Joined by Zinoviev and Kamenev in the "unified opposition" Trotsky repeatedly breaks party discipline and goes so far as to organise demonstrations against the party.

The trotskyites always forget the part where their idol broke with democratic centralism, caused splits right out in the open at a time when the CPSU needed to appear unified against it's international enemies and blamed his defeats on the party having become "bureaucratised".

Following repeated attempts to reach reconciliation the central committee agreed upon internal exile for Trotsky. He refuses to cease conspiring so they move to expel him. Note here that if Stalin was the monster Trotsky claimed killing Trotsky then would have been easy.

For a detailed examination of this period I recommend Professor Grover Furr and his work "Khruschev Lied" and "Trotskys Amalgams".

The land seizures from the kulaks is part of this period. What everyone forgets is that the land seizures were initiated by the peasants themselves. Frustrated at still being subject to the profiteering of the kulaks (landlords essentially) they took started taking the land.

In the dark days of the civil war concessions had been made to the kulaks to guarantee grain production but now the peasants were angry that they continued to be exploited. The leadership therefore has a choice. Side with the peasants or defend the kulaks (Bukharins position).

Stalin and the majority of the CC side with the landless peasants and so begins the end of private ownership of the land in the USSR. It was action initiated by the peasants and then embraced by the party later in defiance of the party's right wing led by Bukharin.

It must be emphasised here that Bukharin and the right were moving towards positions that Khruschev and later Gorbachev would embrace. The kulaks were central to Bukharins line of increasing the amount of capitalist methods used in the USSR and the amount of private ownership.

The Bukharin line has to be understood for what it was. He advocated not only for capitalist production methods but also more private control over the ecnomy. In other words removing the leading role of the party and the state in the economy. This is exactly what Gorbachev did.

Had the CPSU been filled with petit bourgeois as Trotsky alleged then Bukharin would have succeeded in the 1930's. Fortunately the power of the workers and peasants was such as to push the leadership to further the revolution. Stalin in this struggle stood with the workers.

Throughout the 1930's this intense struggle continues across the USSR. There is constant sabotage of industry and agriculture by the agents of the imperial nations and the Trotsky-Bukharin underground cells. It is this struggle that leads to the Moscow trials.

See Furr for a detailed debunking of the myths of the Moscow trials. What i'll say here is that the idea this was all the product of Stalin being a mad man is total lies. There was clearly an underground movement at work in the 1930's the Trotsky was running from exile.

The 1930's could have seen the revolution fall apart and capitalism been restored. It was the determination and dedication of Stalin and his comrades in backing up the struggles of the peasants and workers that stopped that happening.

This is why Khruschev had to bury Stalin. He had to destroy the example of a Soviet leader who stood with and sought to empower the workers and peasants. It's also vital to consider that Khruschev did to the party exactly what Trotsky accused Stalin of doing.

The attempt to destroy Stalin after his death was a conscious attempt by Khruschev to erase the revolutionary legacy. To enable he and his clique to adopt ever more opportunist methods and seek more compromises with US imperialism.

With Khruschev in power you saw the re-emergence of the Russian bourgeoisie in all it's rottenness. Malcolm X observed that in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis that the USSR had "lost their independence". Malcolm was a very perceptive man.

Going back to the times of Czarism the Russian bourgeois were always a cringing, subservient bunch. Dependent upon British, French and German capitalism for investment and to survive they proved incapable of ruling when the February revolution gave them the chance.

So when the Russian bourgeoisie emerges anew under the USSR of Khruschev they end up being of the same character. Pathetic, craven worshippers of the US and European imperialisms.

If you look at the actions of people like Yakovlev, you clearly see there a man who loathed his own nation. Who wanted above all else to ape the USA. Others were even more extreme such as Yeltsins man Yegor Gaidar. They loathed the Russian working class with a frenzy.

So the vain, weak and pompous Gorbachev was in fact the perfect representative of this new bourgeoisie. They were little better than the comprador bourgeoisie of the Czarist period. Hence why they saw it as their mission to liquidate socialism at all costs.

Interestingly Gorbachev was still afraid of Stalins old comrades. Both Kaganovich and Molotov were placed under KGB guard in the 1980's despite both being very old men long out of the political struggle.

This is because they represented a living link with the past. Two men who were comrades of Stalin who knew what Khruschev and Gorbachev were and that their slander of Stalin was designed as an attack on socialism itself. So Gorbachev had to have them guarded.

As with every comprador regime the Russian bourgeois behaved exactly as every regime of their type do. The trashing of the state, the looting of industry and total craven subservience to the USA.

The emergence of Putin has also to be seen in this context. He was initially seen by Clinton and Blair as Yeltsin but without the drinking problem and open corruption. In fact Putin sought membership of NATO early on in his presidency.

What changes is the fact that Putin and those around him realise that the US and UK are not going to respect any Russian sovereignty at all. So a section of the conservative bourgeoisie headed by Putin purge the openly pro-US oligarchs and consolidate state power.

It was the aggression of the US and Britain that pushed an otherwise subservient Russian bourgeois into an element of resistance. The Russian bourgeois is still split. The more nationalist element is with Putin but the open compradors are still there and determined to remove him

To return to Stalin. The constant propaganda against him comes from the rage of the British and American bourgeoisie at him for defying them, pushing the revolution further and standing with the proletariat of the USSR and the world.

It's also why Trotsky gets a free pass from bourgeois scholars. If Trotsky really was the more "left" leader who was the true revolutionary then he would be damned by the bourgeois as Stalin is. Instead Trotskyites occupy esteemed academic positions and even in government.

So read Losurdo and Furr. Read the works of Stalin himself. It is because we have much to learn from Stalin that there is such great efforts made to keep us away from reading his words and deeds.